Stars Over Zanarkand
by Zachere
Summary: Lulu and Auron revisit the ruins of Zanarkand. Another fic that's merely an excuse for pairing.


  


Author's Note: Spoilers through the Zanarkand Ruins. If you haven't talked to Lady Yunalesca, turn back now.

  
She knew the stars that shone down on Zanarkand were the same that hung over Besaid. But they seemed more beautiful from this vantage point, splashed over the night sky like a spray of bright diamonds on velvet. Or so Lulu thought as she gazed up at them from her bedroll near the smoldering campfire.   
She wondered if they held secrets, and what kinds of secrets stars would conceal. Would their secrets be true secrets? Like one of Tidus's recently released, the identity of Sin? Or false ones like the Lady Yunalesca's? The Lady had told them that Sin could never be destroyed, that death was the only release from suffering. Lulu had been shaken, her breath quickening in a desperate way as someone of legend told her that the hope she had treasured since her childhood years was a false one.   
But Tidus's resolve, his anger, had steadied her- they would find a way to break the cycle. He was from another world, not bound in thinking by the teachings of Yevon- if anyone could find a way, perhaps this boy with a different perspective could. He had given her new hope.   
She closed her eyes. New hope, indeed. She had nearly resigned herself to the loss of Yuna, her friend, so much like a younger sister to her. That pain had ridden on her shoulders every step of this journey and was every bit as sharp beforehand as it would have been after. _No sacrifice is too small_, she had told herself, _to rid the world of Sin for a time and bring the Calm. Yuna was born to die._   
_And now we will find a way to bring the Calm, forever, and Yuna will live._   
She had carefully not examined this new hope too closely, knowing that the new possibility that her greatest sorrow might be averted would be a great sword, sharply cutting into her heart- and she was too proud to collapse in front of the others. But now her mind couldn't stay away from the topic, and she felt tears prickling behind her eyelids.   
She stood quietly, knowing that she would cry and unwilling to do it before others, no matter how deeply asleep they seemed.   
Lulu picked her way quietly over rubble until she reached the ruined remains of a walkway. She strolled for a time and stopped, looking blindly over what might have been a blitzball arena a thousand years ago.   
She'd dealt with the loss of her last summoner, and the guilt of not protecting her well enough. Although she knew, and had known, that most summoners did not complete their pilgrimages, it had been a long time before she'd dared to guard again, and the ferocity of her resolve when Yuna had asked her to be her guardian had been a great strength to fall back on. So many times on this journey as she blasted fiends away with her magic she had thought, _Yuna will not die, _followed silently and inevitably by, _yet. _   
And somehow she had pulled herself together after the loss of her lover, Chappu. A wholly different kind of pain, that. No guilt there, just devastating loss that had faded into chill over the years.   
So many deaths.   
_No more deaths. Yuna will live._   
And her hope reared up and seized her, shaking her like a great monster with prey in its jaws. She crouched quickly and grasped at the ground, scraping her fingers on stone, but she did not notice with the effort of remaining silent in this quiet echoing place as tears streamed down her cheeks to drip off her chin.   
_Yuna will_ live.   
She stayed that way for an eternity, frozen, struggling to control herself, striving for her lost composure.   
Finally the sound of a rock skittering across the walkway snapped her out of it. She stood quickly, readying a spell for whatever fiend had found her.   
It was Auron, night no deterrent for his sunglasses. He stood near her, great sword on his shoulder, back turned.   
Lulu looked at him and thought again of secrets. He held many, of that she was certain. Sometimes she imagined that he did not speak for fear of blurting them all out.   
And now she wondered what he had made of her, crouched on the ground like a cornered animal.   
"Yes?" she said.   
Auron stared down the walkway; alert for any enemy he could cleave in two with his sword.   
"It's dangerous," he said, still looking for fiends. "You should know better than to wander off alone."   
"I fear nothing here."   
He said, "Hmph," in his short way, and she was already annoyed, her restraint not what it might have been, so when her Cait Sith stepped around her ankle from where it had fallen and bowed to Auron, she did not call it back, but bowed as well.   
Darkness seeped and swirled into the air around Auron, soon masking him completely. It bulged but did not tear as he swung his sword down from his shoulder, and purple lightning swelled to a crescendo inside the sphere until it exploded, blowing Lulu's hair back and leaving Auron stretched unconscious on the pavement.   
Her doll stood at her feet, looking up at her with arms outstretched, and absently she gathered it back into the crook of her arm.   
Then she shook her long braids back over her shoulder and went to attend Auron. She bent over him and reached for his neck- but before she could check his pulse, his hand shot out seized her wrist. She grunted with the ground's impact and found herself pinned underneath a very annoyed swordsman.   
Out of the corner of her eye she saw that her Cait Sith was standing and staring, ready to strike its mistress' attacker. She tapped a lacquered fingernail on the ground and it crumpled, inanimate once more.   
"Ultima?" growled Auron.   
"Yes," she said.   
"And when were you going to tell us you learned Ultima? Or were you just going to blast _all _of us?"   
"I was going to wait until it was needed," she said. "I only blasted _you_ because-" and she trailed off, unsure of her words. He was a warrior, a legendary one, and his implication of her incompetence had come at an unfortunate time. There were other great fighters, she knew, and she was one of them. Perhaps she had needed to show him.   
He didn't appear to notice her lack of conclusion- instead he looked at her face.   
"You've been weeping," he said, running a calloused thumb down her cheek and presenting it to her so she could see the proof. His words were an accusation.   
She didn't respond, only shifted slightly to check how tight his grip was. The ground was cold and she did not particularly feel like being interrogated by a death-obsessed swordsmaster.   
"Tell me," he demanded.   
"It's nothing that concerns you," she said, ignoring his weight upon her, ignoring the fact that she was trapped.   
"Everything concerns me," he said. "I need to know everything that's going on with this company," and he squeezed her wrist, "in case one of us becomes a danger to our goal. You will tell me why you attacked me."   
She spoke, and her words drifted up to his face in misty clouds. "I cast Ultima on you because you annoyed me. I can take care of myself perfectly well- you're a fool for not knowing so."   
He grimaced, but seemed to accept this.   
"Why were you weeping?" His voice was gruff, reluctant, and she almost wanted to laugh. Had he decided he didn't want to know after all?   
She closed her eyes. "Yuna. Yuna will live." Hope stabbed her again in the heart and she felt another tear slip across her temple into her hair. "And Sin will die."   
She felt his grip loosening and turned her head away, uncaring.   
"I understand," he said suddenly. "It didn't happen on my own journey, but I understand." A rough palm smoothed the hair out of her face. "I wish it could have happened for me," and if it was possible, she thought that his voice might have been rougher than usual.   
And that was all he said until tears stopped slipping out from under her eyelids.   
Still she was reluctant to open her eyes, aware that he'd been watching her the entire time she wept, unwilling to see his undoubtedly condescending expression. And acutely aware of his nearness, his weight pressing her into the ground, the fact that it had been years since she had been this close to a man. She felt sudden heat down her limbs and opened her eyes.   
But Auron wasn't looking at her- instead, his gaze was unfocused and pointed at the old blitzball arena, where Tidus had been a star over a thousand years ago.   
Since he seemed to have forgotten her, she took the opportunity to look at him.   
Time had not been kind to this man- deep lines tracked around his mouth and between his eyebrows, the result of much frowning, she assumed. And the scar, which had not been apparent when their party had been privy to the ghosts of pilgrimages past, cut a ridged swatch from his eyelid almost to his mouth. She wondered who had given it to him.   
She reached up and traced a fingertip down the thick scar tissue, feeling him freeze as she did so.   
"Don't."   
"Hush," she chided. "If you aren't going to let me up, I get to touch you."   
He looked at her, finally startled, and then as surprise faded his expression became perfectly neutral.   
Auron made no move to release her, and she blinked as she realized how he must have taken what she had said- and what he was telling her now without words.   
Lulu was not a shy woman, and it would not have occurred to her that Auron might be. Although, she mused, she had seen his younger self, and would not have been surprised if that man had been. The older Auron she had simply assumed not to be interested in this sort of game. He was deadly serious always, with no time to waste for such things.   
She was also serious, but play never hurt anyone as far as she had found. And besides, they might always fail, and there wouldn't be a better chance than this to really feel alive.   
So she sat up as well as she could and kissed him.   
He was expecting it; his mouth was hard but not unwilling. Stubble scraped her chin and she raised a hand to touch his face at the same moment as his hand came to rest on the bare skin at her throat.   
Then he broke away, and she saw that his face was twisted with a strange mix of rage and grief.   
Auron's voice was flat. "We don't have time for this." He made as if to stand up. She grabbed his shoulders.   
"Yes, we do," Lulu said, in her firmest voice. "Everyone is asleep."   
"We go to Sin tomorrow," he reminded her.   
"All the more reason. This might be our last chance."   
He did not respond, and she frowned. "What is it?"   
Finally Auron looked at her and said, "This is a game for the living."   
He shrugged her hands off his shoulders as she blinked and put two and two together. But she chuckled suddenly, and he looked at her in outrage and forgot to get up.   
"Don't you even know your own nature?" She smiled, cat-like, at him.   
"Make no jokes about this, woman," he snarled, and his fist thumped into the ground next to her head.   
Lulu ignored his outburst and gave him a solemn look. "Do you know what the Unsent are?" His mouth tightened and she continued. "They are humans who have died."   
"Tell me something I don't know," he said. "Quickly."   
She nodded, amused. "They die, but their will keeps their souls from the Farplane. You've been Unsent for more than ten years, yes? Did you never wonder why your heart still beat? Why you slept, ate, fought, breathed as any other living human?"   
He frowned. "Explain."   
"Your will. It is very strong. Summoners and sorcerers use their will to perform their magic- this is the same. You willed your body to recover, but your soul owes a great debt, the life-debt. The Sending is performed by another strong-willed soul- they force you to pay that debt."   
"But your body is alive, as alive as it ever was." She touched his hair. "You only need to look to see it. I warrant you did not have silver hair ten years ago."   
She slid her hand around to the back of his neck.   
"Tell me one thing more," he said.   
"Anything," she murmured.   
"Can you Send?"   
Lulu looked up into his face and felt a new pain settling into her heart.   
"No," she said. "My will is bent toward destruction and souls cannot be destroyed. That is why summoners always perform the Sendings- they call, or push, but do not annihilate."   
Auron paused for a few moments, thoughtful. And then he bent his head and resumed their kiss, not gently, but with a passion that surprised her. And as her hands picked open his jacket, she knew that sorrow would always be with her.   
But this might be enough. 


End file.
